Creature Comfort
by komaeda
Summary: He knows that of all the decisions in the universe, Karkat is the most difficult of any of them. Or, the tale of a three year long identity crisis.


this was uploaded to ao3 under the username asukalangley in september and i only just decided to upload it here as well

* * *

Dave hates that in this universe, or at least what remains of it, stupid equals dead.

A small part of him wonders if in the next session he will be able to hold a blade in his hands and stop his breath from catching in his throat. He has nightmares, both waking and asleep, of it fumbling out of his grasp, of blades scraping against his invisible sins, of his friends turning their backs to him on the battlefield. Until then, he lies awake, staring at the ceiling with his limbs taught with nerves, telling himself that when the time comes he cannot let his resolve waver, not even for a second.

Stupid equals dead.

But then again, look where his Bro ended up – and he wasn't so stupid. At least, not in the ways that mattered.

* * *

He's in the middle of making various farmland animals for Can Town out of cotton buds and toothpicks with the Mayor when Karkat storms in, a crease between his brows and thunder in his steps. He does not say anything. He merely sits at the corner of the room, folds his arms like the petulant child he is eternally roleplaying, and sulkily sets his gaze on the expanse of Can Town. The Mayor does not say anything, but Dave hadn't expected him to anyway.

"What's got your gimmicky knickers in a twist?" Dave asks.

"None of your ass-munching hiveswax." Karkat snaps back.

Dave holds his hands up in mock surrender. "Wasn't asking to get up all in your grill like someone's misplaced, beer-bellied dad, man. I was just gonna make sure you're not bringing your bad attitude into the general vicinity of the greatest town to ever can. The last thing this place needs is another hurricane a la somebody's clumsy feet."

Karkat's glare darkens. The great Hurricane Terezi is not something Dave is likely to let anyone forget any time soon.

Impatient, the Mayor tugs at Dave's shirt sleeve and holds his hand out for what could pass for a rabbit if you stood very far away and thought about it very hard. Dave gives it to him, and the Mayor places it in a meadow coloured in by green chalk and the occasional pink flower, right next to a flock of other bunnies and several crows. For what is a town without its residential murder of crows?

If Dave closes his eyes and loosens his shoulders, he can pretend that the grass is brushing back and forth against his knees. That the sun is casting a mellow halo across his hair, pale blonde against shimmering gold. The smell of dirt in the air is a luxury. Instead, all he has is cold metal biting through his pajamas and even colder grey everywhere he looks. He marvels at how he can miss something he's never really cared for in the first place.

"Don't tell me your town is missing a Grub King."

Dave doesn't flinch, but it's a near thing. "Dude, you see us putting together our happy family of barnyardigans and the first thing that comes into your head is 'geez I hope they make an establishment where you can shove 'em straight into your mouth'? I mean, I know that's real hypocritical of me considering I haven't crossed animal and animal products off the list of things I consume but –"

"Grubs aren't the same thing as your fluff hoppers, you unrepenting nooksniffer," is his surly reply. Karkat's mouth settles into a grim line. "Just when I think you can't get any more culturally insensitive, you decide to make it your personal mission to prove me wrong in every sense of the word."

Dave carefully completes adding ears onto another bunny. "That's what you get for hanging out with the only guy on this meteor who's a bigger asshole than you."

The Mayor holds out a piece of cotton fluff to Karkat. Dave stills, as placid as a doll, his eyes flicking from the Mayor to Karkat from behind his shades. It takes a second before Karkat falls victim to the Mayor's charms and shuffles out of his corner via his knees.

Dave makes it a point not to look into the full roundness of Karkat's eyes, red-rimmed and tear stained, as he picks up the cotton ball and determinedly tries to jam tiny toothpicks onto the bottom of it, following the other cotton bud crows as a blueprint. He definitely does not pick up on the way Karkat utilises his claws as precise little tweezers. And Dave most certainly does not ask Karkat what's wrong; because first of all, Dave doesn't do feelings jams, and second of all, if he was going to do a feelings jam it would not be with an angry ass like Karkat Vantas of all people. Trolls. Whatever.

"Give me one of those." Karkat says after a while, jerking his chin towards the crayons. It's bad enough that Dave has to contend with the jerk who stole Christmas – or, well, something along those lines – but now he has to take orders from him too?

"Hey man, we're in Can Town now. You use your manners and say 'yes' to everything that comes outta my mouth. Give it a try."

"Go fuck yourself."

"You're a natural." Dave hands Karkat an orange one just to piss him off. His fingers stay as close to the tip of the crayon as possible on the off-chance they accidentally end up brushing hands. Karkat's jaw clenches, but he doesn't say anything as he takes it from him and starts carefully blocking a sign in Alternian on a piece of off-white paper. Dave averts his eyes and goes back to making rabbits.

They decidedly do not talk about their feelings.

Karkat comes back to Can Town the next day, brighter eyed and with less of a line between his brows; and then the next, and then the day after that. They are evenly matched, but are perfectly at odds. Dave talks too much. Karkat's claws always click against the tiles. Dave eats too many cardboard-tasting tortilla chips near Grub King. Karkat eats grubs – well, no, not literally. Dave quickly learns that anything with 'grub' before it just means it's for grubs. Dave has the Mayor largely on his side, but Karkat has figured out that politely asking the Mayor for things is more likely to get him exactly what he asks for.

They're at a stalemate, and somehow Dave is absolutely fine with it.

* * *

Rose is checking her lipstick in the toaster's reflection when Dave walks in to grab something for dinner (the menu tonight is most likely a juicebox of some description and/or noodles). His earbuds are in his ears, blasting his own shitty music because at this point he has nothing else to listen to and he has no one to nag him about it, but he tugs one of them out as he enters. She wipes away some black at the corner of her lip with the edge of her nail, raising a delicate brow at him when he says "'sup" like the douche he is.

She straightens, flattening out the folds in her dress like the sophisticated young lady she is. "Kanaya and I were thinking it might be nice for all of us to get together tonight." She starts, and Dave has the sinking suspicion that she's rehearsed this. "I believe Terezi and Karkat will be joining us, and I figured it would be courteous to extend the invitation to you, too." Rose pauses. Her cheeks flush, just a little. "I mean to say I would like it if you came."

Dave ignores the way his stomach twists and he leans against the kitchen counter, all casual. He does not think about the fact that they haven't hung out properly in approximately three weeks and twenty-two hours, nine minutes and thirty-eight seconds. Going off on a suicide mission and then failing the actual suicide part of it together shouldn't leave much room for second-guessing intentions and seeking out reassurances, and yet he still finds himself wondering if Rose even likes him at all. Gone are the first few days of curling up on opposite ends of the same bed, her nails dragging idly through his hair.

"I'm gonna pretend you didn't word that weird as hell and instead ask how you managed to get Karkat to agree to this without him throwing some kind of fit over it."

"Everyone gets a little sick and tired of being socially inept after a fashion, Dave. Three years is a long time to spend avoiding each other. We might as well become friendly, if not learn more of their practices. Time passes quicker that way, does it not?" Her lips twist in a smirk.

"Yeah, I bet you're real pleased with that one." Dave rolls his eyes, and is surprised to find that he doesn't care if his body language gives the gesture away.

"So you'll be there?"

"Yeah, maybe."

* * *

It turns out 'getting together' means watching some shitty troll movie on Karkat's husktop. Rose had jumped at the chance to experience troll culture second-hand, even if that involves watching two trolls get it on while listening to Karkat passionately explain quadrants with rapid hand movements included. Dave is just pleased Rose isn't drunk.

"It's a damn shame Dominos don't deliver to the building." Dave jokes at one point. He is settled on the floor with his back against the same couch Rose and Kanaya are sitting on, their own little island, and half-hoping no one realises he's only half-watching this weirdass film. He tries to bite the icing off of an iced animal.

"What is a Dominos?" Kanaya asks.

"Uh, nevermind."

"It's a pizza place." Rose explains kindly, not-so-subtly kicking Dave's shoulder with her foot. Dave only feels a little guilty: Rose has tried over and over again to scold him about making references he doesn't explain. She tells him it's rude to ostracize the others, as if they aren't the only two of their species stuck on a rock full of aliens who make plenty of their own nook-filled allusions.

They are at the part where the troll guy is confessing his love to the troll girl for the seventeenth time under the double moonlight – "I love this part," Dave says, just to prove he's still somehow involved with the movie – when Dave realises that this weird hostility he and Karkat have is like water dripping into a bathtub; in that eventually it is going to overflow and they will make a mess of the floor and it will inevitably end up leaking into Rose's room and ruin her hair or something and she will try to kill the both of them. Which isn't good.

It doesn't help that when Dave peeks up at Karkat's face, his grey skin basking in the pale screen-light, it is more relaxed than he has ever seen it. His lips are almost, almost smiling, one of his fangs resting peacefully on his lower lip. It is stillness and a secret, all wrapped up in an elusive Karkat smile. It is louder than anything he has ever said.

When Rose and Kanaya retire to their respective beds and Terezi goes off to nag Vriska, Dave hangs back. "You got any other shitty movies on that thing? Preferably ones with troll Colin Firth wearing some ridiculously frilly goth getup. I hear that guy's all the rage with the ladies."

Karkat looks equal parts like he'd rather rip his eyeballs out and play tennis with them than oblige Dave with an answer, and equal parts like he's a dying man who's just seen the heavenly gates to Shangri-La on the horizon. He gives Karkat another second to sort his shit out before he plops down on the other side of the couch. He places the box of iced animals between them like some kind of shield. It leaves a smaller distance between them than Dave desires, but he can deal.

Karkat sighs. "What do you want, you think-panless bottomfeeder?"

Dave is skirting truths more closely than he ever did back at home, so he says, "just to hang out. Is that cool?" His voice strains a little with trying to keep the emotion out. If Karkat notices, he doesn't jump down his throat for it.

"I don't know if this is you confessing to being a romance junkie." Karkat replies warily. "Either way, I don't know who this 'Colin Firth' guy is."

"Only just the king of romance, dude."

Karkat puffs up like he's just had his feathers ruffled. Dave's face starts in an aborted half-emotion.

"I don't see what he's done to earn that title when I haven't heard of his asinine rear-end." Karkat pulls his husktop towards him as he starts to search for a suitable movie. "I'm making the conscious decision to be the bigger troll here and not accuse you of making a douchey joke out of me."

"Thanks."

"Instead I'm going to make you watch this." He puts the husktop in front of the both of them and presses play with an air of smug superiority. The title card comes up and Dave resists the urge to groan. Loudly.

"Oh man, at least take me out to hate-dinner first. That's the only way you can make me sit through a hate-fucking-filled 50 First Dates."

"You're not exactly hitting the pinnacle of anyone's comedic potential." Karkat nearly sneers as he settles back into the cushions. He fishes an iced animal out of its box, sniffing it curiously before testing it against his teeth. "Which is to say, don't make jokes about quadrants or romantic movies when your thinkpan shield is too thick to possess even the most infinitesimal kernel of understanding. Now be quiet."

"Explain them to me." Dave says before he can even think about it.

"Explain – what, quadrants or romantic movies?"

"I mean, quadrants aren't exactly in my circle of interests, or more appropriately, my four-square court of interests, but for the sake of understanding and appreciating what troll Adam Sandler sees in troll Drew Barrymore and how their relationship is inevitably going to change geometrical shapes, I'd say yeah. You should probably tell me about 'em."

"Well." Karkat looks almost put out. He glances at his husktop as if troll Adam Sandler himself can save him. As is, troll Adam Sandler is trying to hit on troll Drew Barrymore, oblivious to the world outside of the edges of the screen. "I mean. The horribly edited version is that the romantic landscape is trife with landslides and doomsday devices and all sorts of false starts, but we all know that one day we'll reach troll serendipity. Or die." He shrugs. "Whatever comes first."

"That's depressing."

Karkat's grow more intentional with indignance. He tries to scratch at the rest of his iced animal with his claw. "It's a shame that you're missing something." This time he's definitely sneering. "Common sense, probably. Life is depressing. Grow up."

"God, it's a sob story after all. Sounds like you need to hear that more than I do, man."

He slips down in his seat a little, his spine hunched over, and crosses his arms. "Shove a throb stalk in it and watch the stupid movie."  
"That's what I'm tryin' to do, but I kinda need some fuckin' context here. Can't really understand the significance of anythin' when you're over here throwing yourself a grand pity party that no one's showing up to."

"Look, if your stupid friend couldn't understand it the first thousand times, then there's no way you will."

"John? No offense to John, and by that I mean all the offense, but that guy's more oblivious than Terezi tryin' to cross the fucking street. Give me a go."

Karkat frowns. He seems profoundly uncomfortable, and shit, Dave should have backed off, this was a bad fucking idea, way to go, asshole –

Karkat leans forward and pauses on an utterly terrible frame of troll Adam Sandler. "I'm just going to give you the context for this movie," he hedges, "otherwise we'll be here all fucking night and you still won't be able to understand the complexities of trollmance. You'll have spades coming out of your hearing noggins for fucking weeks."

"I suspect that's gonna be the case either way. Enlighten me, oh wise master Vantas."

"So a well balanced troll is gonna have a good distribution between hate and pale feelings, right? And arguably any character troll Adam Sandler plays isn't going to be a well balanced troll, but… but Henry and Lucy feel both red and black feelings towards each other, but not at the same time. It's all to do with her memory loss, you see? It's a study in how short-term and long-term memory can affect quadrants. Of course, she'd have been culled immediately. Survival of the fittest, or whatever. Which really just makes the story all the more appealing."

It isn't exactly like the explanation conflicts with the Karkat Dave knows: angry, loud, perpetually grumpy, and far too up his own ass. It's more like the Karkat he's seen is a partial truth.

"But of course, it's not like humans ever have to worry about broken-brained shit like getting culled just because you can't remember the assfuck who's trying to court you. Accidents happen, and you suffer the rest of your short, miserable life for it."

"That's rough, buddy." Dave deadpans. "I don't get why you make Alternia out to be the fuckin' promise land when all it seems to be is a dog eat dog world where the only way you can show care for each other is through murdering or fatally injuring someone." He doesn't mean to say what he does next. The words just tear out of his throat, completely bypassing his nonexistent word-filter. "But I guess the irony in that is that Bro's care for me involved all sorts of fucked up shit, so maybe I've got less room to talk." Dave ducks his head, mumbling, "at least some places had healthcare."

Karkat gives him a weird look, like perhaps he is seeing him for the very first time. There is something he wants to say, but doesn't, which means that it is either completely sincere or entirely too kind.

"Just play the movie, man." Dave says before Karkat can start anything unpleasant, such as facing the trunkbeast in the room or worse: a feelings jam.

Karkat struggles a little bit more. Then he presses the space button and retreats back into the cushions. Embarrassment gives way to a fragile sort of companionship, and they avoid talking about anything as sincere as feelings for the rest of the night.

* * *

Karkat watches at him from across the table at breakfast the next morning, where Rose is trying to get Dave to try English Breakfast tea against his better wishes, and when Dave catches him staring Karkat darts his gaze away. Karkat does not come into Can Town that day. Dave doesn't know why he always has to ruin good things.

* * *

It's almost a week later, a week of strained silences and skulking around, when Rose's smile reaches her eyes like no distance had ever come between them. Her hand rests prettily against the doorway to his room. "I heard through the most purple of grapevines that you mentioned you knew how to throw together something vaguely resembling a meal."

Dave looks up from his mixing gear. "How the fuck did you get in past the bouncers?"

"Oh, my. It's not as though the only club I've ever attended was of the Club Penguin variety, but I did hear that girls get free entry. Is that not how the pickup line goes?"

"You've just shattered the life-long theory that you were a Neopets kid in a single sentence."

She perches herself at the end of his bed, syrupy sweet. "I was neither. Habbo was perfect for a little armchair psychoanalysis, what with all the parent and baby roleplaying dynamics. Someday I will have to find the time to tell you all about my observations."

"Just rip up my academic thesis, why don't you. Tear it into shreds before my very eyes and watch me scramble to put together the pieces."

She huffs a laugh. Ah, the simplicity of joy. "I'm sure there are better endeavours to chase, such as putting together your talents and heinous knowledge of the Food Network to provide us with a home cooked meal."

Dave narrows his eyes. "Have you come in here just to passive-aggressively get me to cook you spaghetti on toast or some shit? Just because I've seen Gordon Ramsay yell at people for a total of seventy-four hours doesn't make me the fucking rat off of Ratatouille."

"I never said it did." She replies cooly, a lilt to her lips and a knowing look in her eyes. "I'm just saying space can be a little daunting without something familiar to keep us all grounded, don't you think?"

Dave cants his head to the side like it could fall off his neck any second now, dragging a low groan out of him. "Do I have to?"

"Yes."

"You're my sister, not my mom."

"And thank goodness for that." Rose stands, her orange robes swishing at her sides, and she pushes his bangs back to press a dainty kiss to his forehead. It never fails to surprise him, just how touchy she is in real life. He'd always assumed she was as fucked and touch-starved as he was.

He goes out into the kitchen a little while later (two hours and fourteen minutes), some half-remembered recipe for nachos in his brain and a lipstick stain he still hasn't wiped off on his forehead, ready to take on the world.

* * *

Karkat stomps up to him one evening. Dave's in the middle of playing 'Finish the Drawing' – without the fatal-injury-as-a-repercussion-to-not-drawing-something-funny part – with Terezi and Vriska. More specifically, he's working on adding two human legs with plenty of leg hair to the lines Vriska left him in an attempt to actually gross trolls out for once.

"Fuck you." Karkat says, his face twisted up in some emotion Dave can't name. Karkat's trying not to look like he cares about how thinly veiled the emotions on his face are. Maybe he doesn't. Maybe he does shit like this all the time. "You're not supposed to be a decent person."  
"Uh."

"That's all I wanted to say."

And then he stomps back out.

"Karkat and reconciliation," Vriska mutters, "exit stage right."

* * *

Dave starts taking to sitting on the same couch as Karkat when he's reading his stupid romance novels and listening to him read them aloud. Whether they're in Alternian or English doesn't matter. They all kind of suck anyway.

Their feet touch occasionally. Dave very carefully does not think about it.

"Dude, how the fuck do trolls seduce each other when they have to go back and fuck in your stupid slimepods? What's the suction on those things? Do they ever get stuck inside each other?"

"You know, it's absolutely fucked up that you can go around criticising recuperacoons when Rose tells me you can go a solid three weeks without changing your sheets."

"Nice swerve there. Why were you talking about my bed?"

"None of your business."

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were flirting with me."

"If I was flirting with you, you would know." Karkat sniffs.

"Because I'd be traumatised?"

Karkat's face flushes. His nose scrunches, and Dave absolutely does not take note of how he feels some weird drop in his stomach. "Because – because. Nevermind, and fuck you."

* * *

Dave purposefully does not think about Bro until Karkat brings it up again.

They're sitting on either ends of the government buildings in Can Town, passing a bag of chips Dave had alchemised a day earlier between each other. In very short order, there are repairs needed to the local house of officials, the bank, and the nearby expensive cafes, but a much-needed snack break takes priority. They've found that it's nowhere near as satisfying to repair things than it is to make them.

"Alternia isn't as bad as you make it out to be." Karkat says out of nowhere, almost haughty.

"Keep tellin' yourself that. I'd take Earth politics over worldwide torture porn anyday. That pseudo-porn chatroom probably explains why you all turned out the way you did. Then again, your shit was more like a really long snuff film than anything else."

"What and what? "

"I don't know if you're questioning the state of Earth politics or porn. Shit's crazy on both ends."

Karkat's blank stare only tells Dave that Karkat's process bar is going from 2% to 25%. "Here I was, going to tell you nice stories I haven't told anyone else about my dearly departed lusus, and you're over here trying to fondle your shame globes. Ridiculous. That's the last time I try to bond with you over anything ever."

"Come on, man. This friendship's never gonna take off if you get discouraged by my knowledge of what totally innocuous porn bots say to each other in their not-so-private domains." Dave places his chin on his knuckles, his elbow resting on the crook of his leg. "Go on."

Cautious but eager, Karkat says, "well, where do you want me to start?"

"I don't know. I guess we could go a few lightning rounds. What was he like when you were a young and more awake-looking Karkat?"

Karkat's nose scrunches, like he doesn't know whether he wants to laugh or not. He ducks his head and stares intently at the ground, his thick brows two strokes of defiance. He decides to go right for the meat of things. "I used to despise him, to be honest. He always kept me locked up and it gave me a bad case of cabin fever. You really get sick of seeing the same four walls all the fucking time, you know? But then when I got older I realised it was really just because he didn't want me to get culled the second I stepped out the door."

"Again, your planet was monumentally fucked up. They deserve some kind of plaque, like 'here lies the most fucked up society that ever did societ'."

It is bitter, the way his tone inflects. "Past me was too much of a fucking tool to look two metres away from himself and appreciate the fact that at least someone cared about his wellbeing." His gaze lowers back to the floor. "I miss having someone who cares about me."

To hear such a thing should make him scramble over himself to prove Karkat wrong, and yet he knows that with Karkat there is time for niceties, and there is time for truths. Sometimes, there is even time to say nothing at all.

"What about your lusus?" He starts before Dave can say anything remotely sentimental and/or embarrassing just to fill in the silence. "Your, uh. Your Bro?"

"What about him?"

"Do you have any good memories of him?"

It's a good question. "Yeah."

"Like?"

Dave shrugs. What does it mean when he thinks of a puppet-master's sword reigning down on him in the summer sun before anything else? "I don't really wanna talk about him, man."

He is beginning to accept that he has always been a little on the empty side, and maybe it's not because the fate of the universe is partially resting on his skinny shoulders. Perhaps he's so empty because he is constantly mourning the loss of what could have been, rather than the shit he had. He could have had a great Bro. Dwelling on the could-haves, what-ifs, and the why-nots isn't going to get him anywhere, and yet that night, when he curls up into bed, he wonders.

* * *

They are always hurtling towards some elusive tomorrow.

* * *

The breakfast Terezi puts down is absolutely terrifying in an about-to-digest manner. They're having another one of those group effort things; the ones which either end with them all shuffling off vaguely dissatisfied, or one half-step away from entering a doomed timeline. This one's being lead by Vriska – who, coincidentally, is doing none of the work – in an attempt to build better team spirit so that they can, and quote, 'totally crush it in the next session'. Dave thinks that at this rate he may not even make it to the next session.

"Looks good, TZ."

Karkat's lips twitch with a smile.

Dave scoots back a bit in his chair, gathering his morale, when his foot brushes against something. He glances up, and Karkat's smile has been replaced with a slack jawed look of mild alarm. He keeps his foot next to Karkat's – who's the one stretched out into Dave's area, thank you very much – to annoy him or to satiate his own sudden hunger to have it there or both.

Because the thing is, he's started to notice things. Insignificant details, really. Like the little flashes of skin, rare with how much Karkat likes to cover it; his shadowed eyes when he's been up too long, with his soft smile that flashes white; the way he bites his lip when two characters start to get sappily romantic; the sound of his voice through the stupid fucking crab speaker when dave wants to talk to him at innocuous hours but can't be bothered getting out of his bed.

(Maybe it has something to do with the fact that up until recently, Dave hasn't known Karkat at all. Or rather, he's known a part of him and assumed it was all.)

Then Dave realises that while he's been looking at Karkat, Karkat has been looking at him.

"Ass." Karkat murmurs.

Dave pushes his shades up with his middle finger. Karkat's laugh is like a fire that warms up the darkest parts of his chest.

* * *

No one has seen Gamzee in over a week. Dave almost thinks good riddance until he sees the worried look in Karkat's eye, and, like the moron he is, he agrees to help Karkat look for him. The plan is tidy in conception and messy in execution.

"Dude, no wonder I never see this guy around. This place was made to be some kind of fucked up labyrinth of never-ending rooms. We may or may not be missing David Bowie." Dave pokes his head into yet another metallic chamber. This one is claustrophobically filled with rows and rows of tables and chairs. There are some rooms that are so dense with history that they make him feel light-headed; others bare of anything at all. "Do you know how to find the way back?"

"Probably," is Karkat's distracted reply.

Dave turns and nudges Karkat's shoulder with his. It is a thundering, rampaging touch to Dave's fragile heart. "Hey, we'll find him. And if we don't it's not really anyone's loss."

Karkat huffs a sad little laugh.

He doesn't need to say it, but there is a truth in Dave's words. He is in the unique situation of losing his very best friend to Gamzee's own pious attitude and desire to become a fucking juggalo. It might not have been worth having him in the first place.

They peek into another room.

"Maybe we should just call it a day." Dave shoves his hands in his pockets, swinging a little on his feet. "I mean, the worst that can happen is he's accidentally stabbed himself with all those troll heads he's keeping locked away. Sorry. I mean, rumoured to be keeping. Can't go around TMZing his ass, especially when he's not even around to get his own PR team involved. Hashtag get down with the clown. He's probably just lost."

"Probably."

Dave's lips dip into the smallest of frowns. Dave wonders if this is just Karkat wanting to shout where someone will hear him. It is strange how he gets quieter and quieter when everyone else would get louder. Dave can feel it whittling down on his resolve, not because Karkat is upset at him – because he's not – but because he's tired of this being the only way Karkat knows how to show that he is distressed. "Do you wanna, like. Talk about it?"

Karkat's gaze darts to Dave's. Dave can see the two sides warring: to tell, or not to tell. That is the question. Karkat struggles to explain. "I think Gamzee doesn't want to moirails anymore."

"And that's bad?"

"I don't know. If he wants to break the morailship off and stay friends, then, well. I guess it's long overdue by now." Karkat scuffs his feet against the ground in that silently wounded way of his.

"Rose would probably tell you that some things aren't meant to last forever." Dave offers. He unwillingly thinks of someone else in his life who wasn't meant to stick around. He will unclench his hands and close his eyes so that he cannot see all the things he has let go of. "It's probably for the best."

"Yeah." Karkat echoes. "Probably."

* * *

"What's up with you and Karkat, Coolkid?" Vriska flashes a cocky grin, leaning against a desk as Dave fiddles with the cords in the computer room. Dave tries not to count the seconds until she leaves.

"We're friends."

"You're always staring at each other. It looks a bit like UST to me!"

He grits his teeth. "Like you'd know anything about that."

"Oh, please. You two are giving everyone and their lusus a crash course in sexual tension with your eyes alone."

"I'm not into dudes, so you can cross this one off the stupid shipping chart you all keep hidden under your slime-beds." It's too harsh and too mean, but Dave can't help it. His throat is dry. He's scared Vriska will see through his skin and straight to his bones, shaking under the weight of possibility that comes with liking Karkat Vantas. Vriska has always been good at finding someone's weakness and pressing down on it.

Her brows ratchet up. "If you say so."

He listens to her retreating footsteps. Dave doesn't even realise he's been holding his breath until he releases it, trembling and shivering and shuddering. If he doesn't find something to do with his hands right now he's going to latch onto these cords and make some kind of stupid fucking noose for all his dying sanity.

He pulls out his phone.

turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT]

TG: hey  
TG: you there

TT: Yes, Dave. I'm here.

TG: cool

TT: Is there something you wanted?

TG: im not gay

TT: Okay.

TG: i can just hear you going ""wow dave what a hollow fucking denial"" from all the way over here

TG: turn the judgeometer down a little and hear me out

TG: im about to crush all your little fetishistic shipper fantasies whichll result in you deleting both the tumblr blog youve set up dedicted to putting flower crowns on pictures of my fabulous face and the 300k word fic youve been writing about me and harry potter bumping dicks by just saying its literally impossible to be gay when im perfectly capable of being attracted to girls including terezi and jade and megan fox

TG: so you can take the closet youre so desperate to push me out of and shove it

TG: ok that was way too aggressive and stepping back it totally looks like a denial

TG: but i like girls  
TG: so

TG: yeah

TT: I'd just like to say something, if I may.

TT: Firstly, this will be going into your personal file.

TT: Secondly, I believe you. I get the not-so-subtle sense from your messages that you don't believe me to be very supportive of your sexuality crisis. I have to wonder why you would come to me if you really thought that.

TT: Thirdly, and more importantly, I'd like to say that it's perfectly possible to like guys at the same time as you like girls. Trolls being a case in point.

TG: yeah but thats different

TT: How so?

TG: that has to do with reproduction shit

TG: this has to do with my fucking

TG: dare i say

TG: feelings

TG: cue dramatic shudder here or some equally embarrassing saying

TT: I've found no evidence that their sexuality is purely to do with 'reproduction shit'. I will not even mention that it's not like human sexuality is necessarily for reproduction purposes, either. Nor will I mention that it's perfectly possible to be gay and reproduce, because I have a feeling you aren't quite in the mood for screeds of purple in that regard. Trolls are equally able to have romantic feelings towards each other, even if those feelings work themselves out fairly differently to ours.

TT: In fact, I've found that some of them have preferences towards one gender.

TT: Regardless of how fascinating and insightful troll dynamics work, I promise to handle your sexuality crisis with velvet gloves, Dave.

TG: sexuality crisis

TG: what sexuality crisis

TG: there is no sexuality crisis here

TG: im strictly hetero and thats that

TT: Sometimes your sexuality makes for a very interesting case study. Other times it just makes me very, very sad.

Dave closes his eyes, focusing on feeling the floor beneath him. What an impossible and hideous and hopeful thing this is becoming. He feels a detached sort of respect for the Dave of yesteryear, who managed to keep everything under wraps – from his emotions to his thoughts to hisfucking sexuality – who idolised his Bro so much that he would have given up his life altogether to be seen as an equal. To be loved. Who wanted nothing more than to become John Egbert; the boy who has lived the life Dave wants to live, who is a hero, who is effortless in everything Dave can't do, including being fucking straight . Dave feels a detached sort of respect for the heart that burns inside of him.

He also feels a detached sort of respect for the universe, who has dumped him on a meteor and forced him to confront all the soft, tender parts of himself.

He wants to laugh, or cry, but in the end he's still far too empty.

* * *

He doesn't even need to count the minutes of the awkward sex scene they're sitting through; not when time pumps its blood through Dave's veins. He walks with the weight of clocks ticking their way through his insides, spreading slowly like some kind of disease, and he spins the dials back and forth with whim alone. He should have the universe in his hands, and yet with all his godly powers he is still going to sit through this fucking sex scene without making it all kinds of awkward.

"Do humans really bone people they've just met?" Karkat asks, glaring at the screen. He doesn't seem to notice Dave's nervous moment.

"Sometimes." He looks just past the edge of the husktop, waiting for the scene to end and the girl's moans to die down. "You really gotta stop looking at everything through a romantic-comedy lens, man. This isn't supposed to be romantic. It's essentially about a bunch of guys jerking it to their angsty, masculine feelings. Which is an oxymoron, but whatever. There's no room for romance in this movie."

Karkat ignores him to say, "they haven't even had time to establish a kismesis, let alone any red feelings."

"Trolls never just fuck for the sake of fucking?" One of Dave's brows ratchets up.

He can't see it in the dark, but he can totally imagine the tips of Karkat's ears going red. "I wouldn't really know."

"Oh. Okay."

"I also don't get why he's fine getting into a complete stranger's abdominal sausages in an ablution block, yet can't even manage to muster up the courage to touch hands with his best friend. They have a lot more chemistry than whatever chagrin-tunnel this is supposed to be."

"Most films made by humans involve straight couples, Karks. It's all about profitable marketing. China doesn't want any of that gay shit."

Karkat's nose wrinkles as he tries to process. "No offense," which means it's certainly going to offensive, "but sometimes Earth sounds like a load of hoofbeastmanure."

"You said it, man."

Karkat looks at him sideways.

Words can often be Dave's downfall, what with the perpetual foot in his mouth, but he does not think he has it in him to shatter this moment with letters and syllables and a horribly unironic intent.

"Speaking of Earth and angsty masculine feelings," which is always a good way to start, "I... You asked me about my Bro a while back."

"I did." Karkat is fisheyed with suspicion.

He stares ahead determinedly. There are shadows in his voice, a heavy ache in his chest. He thinks that if he is not careful he may suffocate on the words. "I just wanted to say that I think every good memory I have of him is tainted by him being an absolute jackass who straight up didn't like me at all."

"Dave–"

"Like, there were times when he said my webcomics were good but I don't think he even meant that at all. He didn't even laugh at any of 'em. Not even the ones I was proud of. He never said anythin' when they became some kind of paradoxical hit, either, which is especially dickish when he knows I only started makin' 'em to impress his narcissistic ass. But I don't even know if that label is even right. I didn't know him. I only knew what I wanted to know. Or what he wanted me to know. Which was nothing!" Too many silences. Too many walls. "And he was always sticking puppets and stupid sex toys in places no sex toy should ever be just to freak me out, like they were some kind of sick reminder that…"

Karkat's voice is gentler than he's ever heard it. Dave is quivering with chained emotion. "What, Dave?"

"Nothing. Nevermind. We're getting to a good part, anyway."

The main character punches his best friend in the face. Dave does not talk again for the rest of the movie.

* * *

He doesn't remember falling asleep during their third viewing of Pride and Prejudice, and yet he finds himself horizontal with a hand on his shoulder and a warm lap beneath him.

The realisation hits him like a sack of bricks:

Karkat likes him.

He likes Karkat.

So much it hurts , in fact. It is so horribly apparent, and yet doesn't make any sense at all. He knows that of all the decisions in the universe, Karkat is the most difficult of any of them.

He should say something. He should get up and kiss him. Karkat likes romantic shit like that, right? Upside-down Spiderman kisses and roses and enemies to lovers and sweet, sickly words. Ain't nothing Dave Strider can't handle.

He closes his eyes and pretends he never woke at all.

* * *

His blade represents a different part of him, a side that he wants nothing more than to forget. (The hot Houston sun. The glint of a blade. The caws of crows as they scatter, flying into the molten gold sky. The scars. The stitches. The never-ending fear.) His brain starts to give out when he tries to fit this side in with the rest of him.

Dave can't remember what he was thinking about before he picked up his sword. His body isn't his, and so with a little wonder, he watches himself find his stance in front of Kanaya. His feet are just the right pace apart. His grip is exact. Her eyes are kind, but it is not Kanaya he sees in front of him. (Taller. Broader shoulders. Dark, pointy shades.)

He blinks, shakes his head, and tries to focus on the task at hand. He bends his knees a little, flashstepping when Kanaya stumbles forward to strike. He tries to find some semblance of joy in this, some exhilaration, some proof that all those years of brutal training weren't really for nothing. (He grits his teeth every time their swords clash.)

"You can't keep playing defense, coolkid!" He hears Vriska call. "This whole thing's for you! Stop being a pussy and attack her already!"

Kanaya takes two exaggerated steps forward. Dave flicks his gaze downwards, and realises almost half a second too late that he is meant to do just that. He pulls himself to the right just as Kanaya's thrust slides to the left and cuts off into the air where he was only a moment ago.

He fights like a boy in his first week of training. He meets her only when she aims for the centre of his body, the two metals meeting like silver ghosts in the air. They thrust. They feint. They cut. Dave can't tell if Kanaya's really good for a beginner, if she's been practicing on her own, or if Dave is just not really trying. He's gonna go for the latter. (Did she learn to aim to touch, not hurt? To learn to fall correctly on padded mattresses? To learn to fight so that you may never fight again?)

"Get her already!" Vriska's voice rings in his ears.

The truth is that Dave Strider is afraid.

He'd like to believe he is brave because he is afraid and out here anyway, but Bro's voice is in his head, kicking him down again and again and again.

"I can't." He croaks out. His throat tastes like bile. "I can't. Fuck, I'm sorry."

His sword drops to the ground with a clang! , and he staggers back.

He doesn't want to fight. It is a wonderous thing, to finally admit that to himself with clarity. Pain had been a constant back at home, but now that the mundane has allowed him to stop expecting it, for strife invitations stuck to his door and puppets in the blender, being struck by a blade or by a fist is suddenly an intolerable concept. Part of him is still there, with Bro, but most of him is not.

There is a hand on his back, guiding him out of the room.

"No, Rose," he mumbles, trying to shake the hand off with his shoulder blades.

"Not Rose," a soft voice replies.

"What can I do?" He hears Kanaya ask, muffled like she is underwater.

"Get him some water." The soft voice says.

Dave blinks. "Karkat?"

"I'm here."

"Fuck, man. I'm sorry. I don't mean to fucking… freak out like this." He presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, just for a second. The room they'd been using to train in is so far away from his own, and it gives him an excuse to focus on putting one foot in front of another. Another step away from his sword. "I'm sorry."

"You don't need to apologise to me." Karkat says.

"I'm sorry." Dave whispers.

The hand on his back moves to his shoulder, and Karkat pulls Dave flush against his side. It's a little hard to walk, but Dave appreciates it all the same. He wipes the back of his hand against his cheek and dries it on his jeans.

"Just breathe."

"Wow, Karks, your wisdom is knocking my socks off." He tries weakly. "Please tell me the secret to your wise ways."

"Talking isn't breathing, asshole."

Karkat leads him into his room. Dave's never been in here before, but he is too caught up in his own head to nose around like he normally would. He manages to catch the stacks of DVDs and romance novels on the desk out of the corner of his eyes, and the troll Will Smith poster is kind of hard to miss. Karkat gently eases him down onto the pile of cushions, his hand never leaving Dave's shoulder, before latching back onto Dave the second his butt hits his own cushion. He has just enough time to take in the worry etched deep into Karkat's face, and he doesn't quite know what to do with it.

Dave leans his forehead against the arm that Karkat has thrown around him. "I can't do it, Karks."

"Can't do what?"

"I can't fight. I know I have to, but, fuck man. I can't do it." That's some approximation of the truth, at least. "I thought I would be okay. I've survived worse than some fucking G-rated sparring."

"Maybe it's just the straw that broke the humpbeast's back. That doesn't mean you're weak for letting something finally get to you."

Dave closes his eyes. He remains quiet for some time, just letting Karkat hold him. Then: "what if when we get to the other side, I freeze up again?"

"You won't."

"You don't fucking know that."

"I'll be there, and you can bet your nook I won't let you freeze up lest I kill you myself. Rose won't let you, either. We're not… We're not your lusus, Dave."

Bro was invincible. If he could die, any one of them could die, too. Terezi could die. Rose could die. Karkat could die. There is no ceremony to these sorts of things.

It scares him more than he could ever think to explain.

"Sorry." Kanaya says, and Dave looks up just enough to see her hovering in the doorway with a glass of water in one hand and a tropical juicebox in the other. "I just… I will leave this with you, Karkat."

"Stay." The words just jump out of Dave's mouth. "I mean, you can stay. Or let's just all go watch a shitty movie or whatever. Get me out of my fucking head."

It almost pains him to untangle himself from Karkat, and the little distance Karkat leaves him is still too much.

* * *

"What do you think will happen to us when we meet up with the others?" Karkat asks. They are sitting in Dave's room, on Dave's bed, sorting through all the random shit they'd alchemised only an hour (forty-nine minutes, actually) earlier. Karkat pulls his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them.

"What do you mean?"

"John will be there. He's your best friend, so you will ostentatiously resume that friendship from where it left off. Except he doesn't know me beyond that douche who trolled him for a while there, and Jade would be within a reasonable frame of mind not to look at me twice. She probably won't even remember me. But they're your friends, and it'll be a heartfelt reunion and I'm just… wondering where that leaves me."

Dave fiddles with one of his earrings. He'd foolishly pierced his own ears a long time ago now, but at least the younger, stupider Dave had enough of a brain to all but permanently glue a bottle of salt water to his ears.

The thought of seeing John again fills him with both warmth and dread. What will John think, when he sees Dave and Karkat? Were all those jokes they made how John really felt, or was he just following Dave's lead? Dave shakes his head. "Our friendship isn't gonna just Toyko Drift to a dead stop in the new session. We're bros for life, remember? John'll be your friend because he's a doofus and Jade is nice. Never forget that the Mayor loves you like the son he's never had or wanted. That leaves you firmly in my friendship circle. We're tight."

"Yeah, but it's… Ugh. Nevermind."  
"No, man. This pain train has no breaks. The only thing that's gonna stop it is if Vin Diesel rides in on a fuckin' tank, full frontal nudity and all. What is it?"

"You're so much closer with your friends." Karkat blurts, and Dave thinks, just for a second, that perhaps there will always be that empty something in his eyes. It saddens him, and yet it makes all the sense in the world – after all, Dave is empty too. "I get it if you want to forget about me."

His heart contracts. "Dude, no. No way. First of all, I could never forget about you. You literally wouldn't let me. You'd yell at me and then put me on speakercrab just to spite you if I ever did decide to fuckin' ignore your ass, which is impossible, by the way. Second of all, that isn't even true. Just because I've known them longer doesn't mean they've ever seen me lose my cool like you have. And third of all, just because I'm friends with other people doesn't mean I'll stop being friends with you. Unless."

"Unless?"

Humans are so stupid sometimes. He's thought this many times before, but never before has he had such irrefutable proof. "Unless. Like. You wanted to be something other than friends."

Karkat's eyes narrow. Dave's cheeks flush. The truth is sliding into the light.

"I'm not all open minded about getting multicultural on the quadrants shit." It's like he's forgone the fucking path entirely and is instead trying to whack his way through the bush. "I'm just saying it's obvious that we're hedging past bro territory and into, um."

"Um?"

Fuck. Dave's heart freezes in his chest. What if he's got this all wrong? What if it's like, one of those fucking moirail things Karkat feels for him? "Are you going to throw me a bone here or what?"

"I'm sorry." Karkat has a very blank look on his face. "This is all so funny I forgot to laugh. Are you trying to human date me?"

"So what if I am?" Dave's face is very, very red.

Karkat opens his mouth, then closes it again.

"Not to sound like a third grader who's zero point two seconds away from getting a lollipop stuck in his hair, but do you fucking like-like me?"

"No!"

"Oh. Uh."

Karkat waves his hands around. "I mean, fuck. Yes. Yes, Dave. I like-like you."

"Are you just eenie meenie miney mo-ing this shit right now?"

"Dave. I like you. But it's more complicated than that."

"Explain it to me."

Karkat swallows, his eyes wide. "I'm – as you would so eloquently put it – playing romantic foursquare with your stupid ass. Half the time I want to drag you off into some part of the meteor where no one can hear us and argue until my obvious caliginous intent sinks into that thick thinkpan of yours. But at the same time I want to hold your hand and talk just for the sake of listening to your voice and more than anything I want to make sure you never freak out again. That shit physically hurts . If you open up the dictionary and turn to 'flushcrushed' it will come up with a picture of yours truly.

And on top of that I want to… I'm red. I'm fucking red for you, and it's not even like I'm vacillating. I'm feeling all of it at once. I don't know how to stress it to you that that's not fucking normal."

"Maybe you're just human," is all Dave has the words for.

Karkat flexes his jaw.

One breath. Another. Then –  
"What should we do?" Dave asks. "Because, um. Not to be culturally insensitive–"

"Which just means you're going to go right ahead." Karkat mumbles.

Dave's lips lift in a lopsided grin. "Yeah, something like that. I was gonna say that maybe you should just… discard the quadrants. Go human on this shit. You're probably the one who created human-mance and all its lows and highs, anyway, so it's only fitting."

"But it's not that simple!" Karkat groans, his hands fisted in his hair. "It's like all your stupid human sexuality hoofbeastshit. I can't just… It's ingrained in me!"

"You can unlearn it. Like I'm doing. Like I've done ." He casts a meaningful look Karkat's way.

Karkat's lips press together. His grip on his hair loosens. His hands fall to his sides. "I don't want to ruin this by bringing my stupid baggage into it."

"Dude, I'm just hoping they're not already making you pay extra for the bags under your eyes. I'm pretty sure a large part of relationships is bringing your baggage to the table, rummaging through that shit together, and throwing out the old 'I LOVE BJ' shirt your grandma accidentally bought in Beijing." He puts his hand on Karkat's. Karkat doesn't pull away. It's as if the whole universe has opened itself up to him with Karkat's begrudging admission, and Dave thinks that maybe, just maybe, dreams do come true. "Like I'm sorry I suck at this so much. I'm saying this for now and for in advance. But…" Dave closes his eyes. "I say let's do it."

Karkat makes a quiet nose. Karkat: fierce and faithful and fragile. Then – "We're doing it man." Karkat mutters grudgingly.

Dave smiles, big and brilliant and bright. "We're making it happen."

* * *

Dave remembers a day a summer storm hit Texas, the never-ending sky dark and grey and angry. A single raindrop never changes anything, and so he'd climbed up onto the roof and tipped his head back and let the storm soak him.

That is their first kiss.

He'd spent so long wanting to cup Karkat's cheeks and lean in, to breathe all that he feels into him, that when Karkat finally slants his lips to his he doesn't quite know what to do. His actual first kiss had been while he wasn't even conscious, and he'd never read up on this stuff, let alone found the time and resolve to practice kissing his own hand.

Dave feels the kiss in every part of his body, his nerves tingling with delight. It is a secret that unwinds between their lips.

* * *

The language of intimacy has always eluded the both of them for all the obvious reasons, but they are determined to navigate uncertain seas with instinct and small noises serving as their compass. There are waves, both big and small, that come along in the form of their own hurts they can't just kiss away. Dave finds himself apologising constantly – to who, is what Karkat always asks, and Dave knows that neither of them will like the answer. Karkat cannot get over the fact that someone wants him, let alone that someone wants him back . Dave sees those demons dancing in his eyes sometimes, and that is when Dave takes his hand and plays him all the shitty, vaguely romantic mixtapes he can't help but make.

They learn to touch each other beyond tangling their fingers in their hair or holding the other's waist. They learn to touch with the appreciation of a mapmaker, fingers running along the ink of their spines and the curves of their hips. The bones that bracket Dave's spine are just there for mapping. The plates of Karkat's posture pole are (for now) uncharted territory.

Dave swaps all that emptiness for the sharp, jarring presence of Karkat pressed to his side during their movie-times, his hand on Dave's hip and his lips occasionally on his neck. It's all about the passage of time, you see, in this three year journey. There are the things Dave chooses to remember (crows cutting through the air, sharp as his stupid welsh sword; the dead things, all preserved for time to keep; the sweep of his Bro's hair that first and only time he'd taught him how to mix, the nearly-there smile on his Bro's mouth) and the things he wants to forget (the bruises; the fights; the fear) and the memories he wants to make (John and Jade, waving and smiling and alive ; Karkat's lips a constant private echo of joy; simple domesticity and being unburdened by stupid shit like 'destiny').

It's all about what was, what could have been, and what it could be, if only they make it out of this alive.


End file.
